


F****** Ninja

by Eligh



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: American Ninja Warrior - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9325655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eligh/pseuds/Eligh
Summary: Clint enters a certain competition; Phil gets a bit of a reality check.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Short and less cracky and more angsty than I meant it to be--I've poked at this thing for months in an effort to give it some smut as a finale, but it just didn't want to go that way. It's born from the fact that about a year ago I was working night shifts at a nursing home, and American Ninja Warrior came on every morning at 3am. I'd sit in the common room with the insomniac residents and we'd critique the *ahem* _form_ of the contestants. You haven't lived until you've listened to a 96-year-old say, "His bottom, darling--don't you agree?" (Incidentally, Betty, I do agree.)

Clint’s on a mission.

Granted, it’s an ‘Oh My God My Head Hurts So Bad Why Did I Drink So Much Last Night I Need Drugs’ mission, but it’s a mission nonetheless. Of sorts.

He staggers a bit as he passes through the common area of Avengers Tower—he’s out of painkillers in his own suite but knows they keep a bottle of Tylenol next to the coffee machine. He wouldn’t be out of bed otherwise, but the return is promised to be better than the effort expended. Still, his trek’s not without its trials: his eyes screw up tight against the horrible searing light coming from the television (he’s never before realized that a 10-foot wide screen could be a bad thing) and he’s never in life been more grateful that he can turn his ears off. Judging by what little he can see of the body language from Tony and Thor and Sam, who are all watching tensely on the edge of the couch, there’s a great deal of excitement regarding whatever’s on.

Tony shouts something his direction, but Clint just gestures vaguely to his ears and continues on his way to the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later, coffee pot in hand and medication just starting to work its magic on his head, Clint wanders back into the common room. The TV show’s still on and Clint walks in just as Sam and Tony cringe simultaneously. Thor throws his arms up in the air and looks indignant, while on the screen there’s a slow motion replay of a heavily muscled guy making a leap from one miniscule ledge to an equally teeny-tiny one roughly fifteen feet away. He doesn’t stick the landing and topples sideways, splashing down into a waiting pool of water.

Clint cocks his head, and interest peaked, fiddles with one of his ears. “What’s this?” he asks.

“—….—est show in the history of things being filmed for historical purposes,” Tony says, rapt attention still stuck on the screen. “There’s these people,” he starts, but then snaps his mouth shut when a new guy—this one leaner, bearded, and smiling cockily—steps onto a starting platform.

“’Tis an obstacle course,” Thor picks up after a moment of silence where the three so-called Avengers on the couch all tense and lean forward in their seats. “Featuring many feats of strength and physica—” He cuts himself off with a groan of disappointment when the guy on the screen makes a flying leap off a mini trampoline toward a hanging cargo net, misses his grip, and falls face-first into the waiting water.

When the screen cuts to prefilmed backstory about the next candidate, Sam finally looks over. “It’s called Ninja Warrior, and it’s a physical competition based out of Japan. It’s got four stages, each with progressively harder obstacles. Some of the stages are timed. A lot of it’s strength based, endurance based. It’s been going for twenty-some years, and only a half-dozen or so people have completed the whole thing. We’re watching the American version, which has been going for eight years. Only two guys have completed that one.”

Clint nods thoughtfully and settles in to watch with the rest of them. Sounds interesting enough, so why not? Not like he has anything else to do with his day.

And after half an hour watching contestant after contestant fail (this one slipped and took a header into wall, that one got whacked in the face with a log, the next’s muscles gave out on a hanging climbing thing) Clint nods again and leans back on the couch. He’s still nursing his hangover, but he eyes the TV with an air of resolve.

“Yeah, I could do that,” he says.

“I bet you one million dollars that you cannot,” Tony says immediately. “You’d wipe out in the first stage.” Clint snorts at him and looks over to Thor and Sam for help, but they’re nodding emphatically and sheepishly, respectively.

“Fuck you guys,” Clint says, but he’s smiling. “I’ll show you.”

~

Nat looks skeptical when he tells her his plans.

“I don’t know,” she says slowly. They’re at her secret gym, the one Clint knows has a shooting range in the back that he still can’t convince her to let him see. “You’re heavier than the most successful contestants. And you’re too tall.”

Clint blinks at her, thrown. “Wait, what?”

“Well,” she says, eyeing him as she wraps her hands.  They’ve plans to spar today, and then Clint’s been informed that he’s to make himself scare while Nat and Carol get massages. “The average height for the competitors is 5’8 and not many of the ones who get past stage two weigh more than 165 pounds.” She looks thoughtful. “I mean, you’re 6’3, Clint, and you’re what,” she gives him a once over. “230? It’s not that you don’t have the muscles for it—everyone knows you have the muscles for it—but it’s the endurance thing.” She shakes her head. “I mean, sure, I think you could get through stages one and two because they rely more on agility and sporadic use of upper body, but I think stage three would kick your ass. You’ve got a lot of weight to move around, there’s a lot of hanging by your fingertips.”

Of course Natasha is a secret connoisseur of this weird competition. Because… well. Clint should have known, actually. He clears his throat. “I—”

Nat rolls her eyes. “Don’t look at me like I’ve grown another head. I like the competition. I go to the finals every year to watch, and I’ve trained with several of the top competitors. If being undercover wasn’t such a part of the job, I’d compete myself.” She grins, her mouth full of teeth. “And I’d kick your ass.”

Clint sighs. What else is new? “You always kick my ass,” he points out, and she nods, accepting his resignation smugly.

“приехать на меня братан,” she says, dropping into a defensive position and twitching her fingers at him, beckoning.

Clint scoffs. “Don’t ‘bro’ me, ya crazy Russian.”

“Bad choice of words,” she says with a laugh.

Clint goes low, Nat goes high, and the next ten minutes are spent having as much fun as Clint has had recently—off the range, at least. He, perhaps inevitably, ends up on his stomach with one of Natasha’s thighs nearly choking him and his shooting arm twisted up behind his back, but she releases him the second he taps the mat. She even magnanimously offers him a hand up.

He takes it, smiling. “So would you help me train?”

She cocks her head, still skeptical. “Why this, why now?” And well, it’s not a no.

Clint looks down at the mat. There’s a small splatter of blood smeared into it, and he belatedly realizes he’s got a cut over his eyebrow. Trust Natasha not to pull her punches. “I need something new,” he says slowly, but what he doesn’t say aloud hangs in the air between them. Natasha’s his best friend, and she’s well aware of the pains Clint takes to avoid moving quickly around the helicarriers, to always stay in clear sight. How he doesn’t bring his bow out unless ordered—even though it makes him uncomfortable—how his exploration of ceiling vents has stopped.

She knows how he puts on a brittle face when people he used to call his friends avoid him in the halls of the Triskelion, and that he makes regular visits upstate to a quiet, leafy green cemetery like clockwork once a month.

Clint takes a breath and goes for it. “This is just a, a, I don’t know. A dumb, physical competition. But it’s… I never heard… him… say anything about it.” He doesn’t clarify on who the ‘him’ is; Natasha knows. “We never watched it together. This could be something where every breath I take doesn’t remind me of the mess I made, the fucked up—”

Natasha’s brow furrows. “No blaming,” she says quickly, a sentiment Clint’s heard more than a few times over the last year, but that he’s yet to take fully to heart. “And even still,” she continues, “there’s no time limit on grieving.”

“No, I know,” Clint says, soft but firm. “But… It’s been a year, Nat. And I knew—know—the nature of our work. He wouldn’t have wanted me to… to be like I’ve been. I need to move on. Do something new with my life.”

She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “I’ll help you train,” she says. “Of course I’ll help you train.” She pats him on the shoulder and then takes a step back. “Now, let’s go again. And stop dropping your right shoulder, I can read your tells from space.”

~

“This isn’t even a thing!” Clint complains. He’s clinging—and slipping—down the side of a plank of wood that’s 4x3 feet and 2 or so inches deep, swinging freely over a water-filled pit Natasha’s somehow fashioned in the training room. If Clint hadn’t been so impressed with the course when he’d seen it an hour ago, he’d be worried about how pissed Tony’s going to be when he sees the ‘improvements.’

“Stop being a baby,” Natasha orders. “Do you want to be a ninja?”

“I _am_ a ninja,” he stresses. “Fucking Ronin, fucking—goddamn it—” He loses his grip and splashes down into the waiting water.

“If you’re not going to take this seriously,” Nat chides, warm and dry from the side of the stupid, awful pit, “then I see no reason to be here.”

“Gimme the goddamn towel,” Clint says, and pulls himself up.

~

“You need to move quickly here,” Jess says, walking beside him on the ground as Clint does what is probably permanent damage to his fingertips. He’s hanging from a 1-inch outcropping mounted to a sheer wall, the muscles in his hands straining in new and unexpected ways. Natasha, standing on the sidelines with her arms crossed, doesn’t look impressed by the way his wrists are starting to shake.

“Fast, Clint,” she calls, while Jess nods along. “You’re too heavy to stay here, you need to go quick.”

“You… callin’ me… fat?” Clint grunts, but then makes it ten feet further along the ledge before his hands give out and he drops. Fortunately Nat had, in a fit of benevolence, replaced the water with padding.

It was probably because after two months of just about killing himself every day—Avengers business allowing—with this training, she hadn’t seen any sign of him giving up.

“Better,” she says now, coming to stand next to Jess, the both of them looking at him from upside down as he lay on the floor. And aw, she _can_ be nice, at least sometimes. He opens his mouth to tell her that, but she rolls her eyes and cuts him off before he can speak. Jess smirks. “Now do it again. And faster. And with less, you know.” She waves a hand. “Failing.”

“You guys are sweet, you know that?” Clint says, touching his hand to his heart and giving them big eyes. “I feel the love, and all this support? I don’t know what to do with myself.” But when they raise identical eyebrows he smirks, gets up, shakes out his muscles, and goes to try again.

~

“Spider-jump, spider-jump,” Clint singsongs quietly. “Does whatever a spider-jump does.” He eyes the trampoline that’ll launch him up to the body-prop, takes a step back and a deep breath. “Can he jump, up the thing, sure he can, he’s fucking Hawkeye.”

“I’m telling Peter,” Wade says from where he’s perched on top of the obstacle—though just why he’s here and also why Tasha’s allowing it is beyond Clint—and Clint shoots him an exasperated look before he goes for it.

A bloody nose and what’s sure to be an epic black eye later, Clint sighs and rolls onto his stomach to push himself up. The body-prop obstacle looms over him smugly. Wade, now propping himself between the walls at the top of the obstacle, also radiates smugness, though is far less intimidating. 

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Clint sighs.

Natasha hums noncommittally from where she’s wiping his blood off the edge of the trampoline. “Many people train for years just to be eliminated in the first obstacle,” she says after a moment of contemplative silence. “I know it may seem trite, but…”

“It’s the journey,” Clint says on the heels of another sigh. “Not the destination.”

“No,” Nat says sharply, and tosses the bloodied rag at Clint’s chest. He catches it with a frown, and she locks eyes with him. “It’s something different. It’s you taking something of your own and making your life yours again.”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “It’s winning a million dollars from Tony if I make it to stage three.”

“It is also that,” Natasha says, inclining her head in concession. “Now get up and do it again.”

“Yeah, c’mon buddy,” Wade chirps. “I mean shit! I can do this. Dunno what’s _your_ problem.”

“If you get to the top, you can shoot him,” Natasha suggests. “Incentive.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Our next competitor’s a newbie to Ninja Warrior but a face I bet you all know well—”

“Well, if you count grainy cellphone footage from New York as knowing someone well, Akbar.”

“I absolutely do, Matt, I absolutely do. So here he is: a hometown hero, a farmboy made good, one of the few purely human members of Earth’s favorite superhero team!”

“You’re killing them with anticipation, you know. Just play the video.”

“Play the video, guys.”

~

When Clint’s face swims into focus on the Playground’s break room TV screen, Daisy lets out a wolf-whistle while Jemma and Leo both perk up noticeably. “Oh, it’s Clint, I didn’t know he did this,” Jemma says with a wide smile. “He’s such a nice man.”

Phil sets his coffee mug down on the table with a decidedly un-Phil-like clink and leans over, grabbing the remote to turn up the volume. It’s just one of the announcers talking about the Amazing Hawkeye right now, a voiceover set to a carefully cobbled-together montage of Clint bouncing around a gym engaged in ninja training—apparently aided by Jessica Drew, someone with her face blurred out, and… Wade Wilson… if Phil’s remembering those scars correctly—interspersed with a few shots of him focusing on his draw down the range. His muscled arms feature prominently, and Phil abruptly misses him with an ache that’s just as inappropriate now as it was when Clint was a specialist reporting directly to him.

“Damn, he looks good,” Phil murmurs. Melinda cocks her head at him and frowns.

“That’s nothing new,” she says carefully. “I thought we didn’t talk about Clint.”

Phil frowns, his attention momentarily arrested away from the screen. “Why wouldn’t we talk about him?”

There’s a beat of quiet that’s filled by insipid banter from the hosts, but then Mel blinks hard. “Because you never told him you’re alive. You’ve never even shown interest in finding out what he’s doing with his life, despite the fact that you two were inseparable for years before that? You’ve entirely ignored his existence for the last year—I thought you’d broken up.”

Phil stares at her. “Why… Clint and I weren’t dating, Mel. We were. I mean, friends, maybe. I was his SO, we lived in each others’ pockets out of necessity.”

“Necessity,” she parrots back blankly, her face smoothing to something unreadable. “Are you serious.”

Utterly flummoxed, Phil cocks his head, intending to press her for more, but—

“Listen,” Daisy shushes them, oblivious to their quiet argument, and TV’s Clint Barton smiles into the camera sheepishly. Phil drags his attention away from Mel’s show of—is it distress?—and watches his ex-asset bluster for the camera.

“…started training like this on a whim, honestly,” Clint’s saying when Phil focuses. “I mean, it’s a good addition to my Avengers stuff, makes my body do things I’m not quite used to, you know. Keep in shape for anything.” He sobers. “But mostly I wanted to become a Ninja Warrior to take back my life—I lost someone real important to me during the Battle of Manhattan. And for a long time, he was the only… the grief from him dying just took me over. I went some dark places over the last year. Doesn’t help that I still feel responsible for his death, some days.” His eyes go distant for a second, but then he’s back and grinning into the camera’s lens. “I miss Phil like I can’t say, but this is me moving on to a new chapter in my life, while doing something that I know he’d be proud of me for doing. And like my friend the Black Widow says—” and here he rattles off something in Russian that will probably have to be bleeped if this show ever airs anywhere in Eastern Europe.   

The screen cuts to more trite banter from the hosts, blithering about Clint’s bravery, or fortitude, or some other nonsense, but Phil’s not registering it.

“Necessity my ass,” Melinda mutters, leaning in and fixing him with a pointed look. “You’re an idiot, Phil. You were an idiot then if you didn’t realize how Clint thought of you, and you’re an idiot now for lying to him for so long.”

“I—” Phil tries to defend himself, but almost immediately gives it up as a bad job. There wasn’t faking any of the emotion he just saw on Clint’s face. Mel’s right; he is an idiot. He swallows, and then slowly turns to her and says, “I think I may have had a bit of an oversight.”

“You could fix it fairly easily,” she tells him, crossing her arms. On the screen across the rec room, Clint finishes the prelim round with a grin, hitting the buzzer at the end of the obstacle course and throwing his arms up, V for Victory. Mel nods toward the TV. “Us watching the prelims means that the finals are probably happening soon.”

Phil blinks. “You want me to—”

“This weekend,” Daisy pipes up, her eyes fixed on a tablet she’d produced from between the cushions of the couch. “Finals are this weekend, in Vegas.”

“We could be there,” Melinda says, prodding more gently, frankly, than Phil’s used to. She smiles at him, reassuring. “If you want.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The crowd’s roaring.

Clint knew they would be—he’s pretty recognizable these days and Natasha’d helped things along a few months back by introducing him to the guys she trains with. Point is, the Ninja community—which is totally a thing—were huge gossips, so word had almost immediately gotten out that one of the Avengers was taking up Ninja-ing, even though the first of the rounds—filmed weeks ago—had just aired.

And as an aside, inclusion in the field had actually been a little more intensive than Clint’d realized, as a month or so ago the governing body for the competition had sheepishly asked him to submit to a DNA test, just to prove he actually was human. He’d been offended at first, but then, well. Look at the people he hangs out with.

But he’s here now, and tonight he grins at the camera, winks, and sends off a little salute that’s bound to get him an eye-roll from Cap when he sees the footage. He concentrates, breathes in. Out.

From the sidelines, Natasha—who’s wearing a blonde wig and a facial net, no chance of her being recognized here—blows him a kiss and smiles widely. Jess cheers him on as well, her vintage ‘Amazing Hawkeye’ t-shirt she’d unearthed from Thor-knows-where hanging off one shoulder. Wade Wilson—who’d unfortunately refused to say in New York—also blows him a kiss, distinctly recognizable in his usual black and red suit. The spectators nearest the sidelines are eyeing Wade’s crossed swords warily, but Clint superglued them into their sheaths a good three days ago, so there really isn’t anything to worry about.

Six minutes and change later he’s pressing the buzzer at the end of Stage One, still grinning, and heads to the cool-down area to be interviewed by the sideline reporter.  

“That was such an emotional video,” she says, her eyes wide. “And such an impressive run! We saw you decimate the qualifying run and the semifinals. Are you confident you’ll have similar success on Stage Two tomorrow?”

Clint shrugs as he shakes out his muscles. “Sure. Gotta get the timing right on Stage Two, and I’m heavy, so I might not make it through Stage Three. But you know, I’m having fun.”

The reporter nods earnestly. “Do you think your friend you mentioned in the interview video would be proud? What do you think he would say if he’d been here?”

Clint blinks at her for a moment. “…Sure?” he says, less sure of himself this time. Jeez, go for the gut, woman. “Um, I dunno what he’d say. He was a quiet guy.” He pauses, and then sighs. “No, actually, you know what? He was only quiet where other people could see. So at first he woulda acted like he was cool and calm and collected, but inside he’d have been screaming with excitement, and then if he’d been here, he…” he smirks a little. “Well, let’s say that I don’t think he ever minded much whenever I showed off my muscles.”

The reporter giggles, flushing a pretty pink. There might be a little hero worship going on here, if Clint isn’t mistaken. He smiles again at her, more softly this time. “But I’m just excited to be going on. Vegas, baby.”

“Vegas!” Wade agrees, jump-tackling Clint from the side. Natasha and Jess follow, far more composed, and while Tasha smiles faintly, Jess greets him with a fond arm punch and a grin.

“Good work,” she says. “I knew you could do it.”

“Let’s go get some ladies of the night to celebrate!” Wade enthuses, while the reporter watches them with wide-eyed disbelief.

“Uh, I’m good, man,” Clint says, shaking his head. Jess and Natasha share an exasperated glance.

“Or gentlemen of the night, whatever!” Wade whines, and the camera cuts.

~

 Clint, rather predictably, does not make it through Stage Three. His grip gives out on the six-foot backward jump transition that caps off the cliffhanger; he’s just too heavy to take that kind of abuse to his fingertips. He falls with a shout into the water but surfaces with a smile, whipping his wet hair out of his face before pulling himself up out of the pool and accepting the towel the sideline support throws his direction, glancing around for Tasha or Jess or Wade. Rather oddly, he doesn’t see any of them.

The crowd’s still shouting their support when he’s stopped by the pretty reporter again, her mouth this time turned down into a perfectly practiced pout. “Clint,” she says, “how do you feel after coming so close to Mount Midoriyama?”

Clint grins at her and scrubs his hair idly with the towel. “Awesome. I gotta whole new level of appreciation for the people who’ve completed the course, and I haven’t had this much fun in a long time, completing the course or not.”

“That’s a refreshing take on things,” the reporter says, smiling dazzlingly.

“Hey,” Clint shrugs. “I got what I came for.”

They talk for another thirty seconds, just inane blather about trying again next year, and then the camera’s gone, its eye focused on the next competitor, a professional rock climber who might actually have a chance on all these damn obstacles. Clint looks around again, frowning slightly when he still can’t see any of his friends, but then a striking figure steps into the light, jerking her head slightly in a ‘follow me’ gesture. Clint blinks in surprise and jogs over, still dripping vaguely.

“Mel?” he asks. He hasn’t seen her in months—maybe going on a year—so saying that her sudden appearance is odd would be understating things slightly. God, he hopes the world isn’t blowing up or something while he’s making a fool of himself on TV. “The hell, what’re you doing here?”

“Fixing an oversight,” she says mildly, and then cuts her eyes over to him. “Saw you on TV, decided to come check it out.”

“Oh, okay,” Clint says dubiously, still wary. “I mean…”

A figure steps out of the shadows, besuited and tense, and every thought in Clint’s head grinds to a halt.

“Melinda,” he says, reaching out and grabbing tight to her arm. She lets him hold on without making a fuss, which says more than any words possibly could.  

“He can explain,” she says after the silence stretches into uncomfortable territory. “There was—” she sighs. “He’s notoriously self-deprecating. He always seems so surprised when people feel for him.”

“Hey,” Phil says, mild and faintly defensive, and Clint sucks in a breath.

“You’re real,” he whispers. Mel fades away—either her own version of Ninja-ing, or just that Clint’s got a touch of tunnel vision right now—and Phil steps closer, ducking his head bashfully.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, already babbling, his face a touch white, his fists clenched nervously by his side. “I just—I never thought— and then I saw that interview and I never realized that you felt, that _I_ felt, that we were—we wasted so much, just…” He pauses and swallows hard before lifting his chin. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was alive. It was cruel. And I miss you with… with the sort of ache that doesn’t go away.”

That little speech reads practiced, and Clint can’t help but smile at the thought, imagining Phil talking to his own reflection in a plane’s tiny bathroom. But now Phil’s watching him warily, still tense, maybe psyching himself up for a punch, or a shouting match, or—or something.

There’s only one way Clint wants to take this, though, and so he pulls him in without another thought, wrapping his arms tight around Phil’s shoulders, his neck. “Shut up,” he says. “Just, Jesus, Phil. Shut up. I missed you, too. So fucking much, man.”

“Okay,” Phil sighs against the side of his neck, stilling for a split-second when Clint gives a full-body shudder and sags a little in Phil’s arms. He doesn’t seem to mind that Clint’s getting his suit wet, if the tightening of the arms around Clint’s back is any indication. “Okay, Clint. Okay,” he murmurs, and then he turns his head just a little, and his lips brush against the side of Clint’s neck.

Well. Like Clint’s going to pass up that invitation.

He shuffles a little, backing off just enough to see Phil’s thankful, startled face, and then he leans in, hovering close long enough that Phil gets the picture, that there’s no way he can miss what Clint’s asking.

“Yes,” Phil breathes, and then they’re kissing, a slide of slightly-chapped lips (on both their parts) that shouldn’t be as good as it is, warm hands on Clint’s damp skin, in his hair. It’s perfect.

Or, at least—

“Whoo!” shouts a voice far too close to Clint’s ear, and he and Phil both startle apart, staring at each other with wide eyes. “Is this the guy? Oh em gee, it’s the guy! You’re the guy, aren’t you!” Wade says, bouncing next to them out of nowhere. A glance around reveals that Mel’s headed back, too, flanked by Tasha and Jess—the three of them look murderous, and Clint grins. For once he’s not going to be on the receiving end of it.

“I’m glad you came back,” he says softly, redirecting his attention to the man in front of him. Phil just looks flummoxed, and from Clint’s three-o-clock, he hears the chambering of a round, the soft sizzle of Tasha’s Bites. He leans in, resting his forehead against Phil’s—the better to ignore their surroundings. “I think they’re gonna kill him for ruining the moment.”

“Oh,” Phil says distantly, his gaze fixed on Clint’s face. “Sounds fair, you know.”

Wade yelps, Jess swears, and Clint pulls Phil in for another kiss. Perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, if you don't know the show: 
> 
> Stage 1   
>  Final


End file.
